NEWS

SSCC Summer Training Schedule

SSCC's summer training schedule is available on SSCC's training web pages. Classes are well underway but there's still plenty of opportunities left: Our introductory SAS class begins next week and there's still two seats remaining. Newer techniques for producing publication-quality tables and graphs in SAS will be taught in the final session on 7/19. You may register separately for that session.

July 20th we are offering a new class called Regular Expressions for Data Manipulation and Extraction. This course will give you a solid foundation in how to find and extract or transform specific patterns within data sets using regular expressions, such as are supported in SAS, Stata, R, and Microsoft Word. After taking this class, you will be able to answer questions such as--How do I extract all telephone numbers and email addresses from a data set when their formats may vary? How do I automatically change all dates in a document to a standard format or how do I transpose first names and surnames when there may be a middle initial?

Other workshops available this month include Adobe Photoshop CS2 Basics, Running Large Statistical Jobs Using Condor, and An Introduction to SAS Macros. Register early before classes fill.

NVivo 7, Qualitative Data Analysis Software Training

The Wisconsin Center for Education Research will once again be hosting NVivo 7 training on July 27-28 for a cost of $625 ($575 for students). NVivo 7 is an efficient, flexible and powerful tool for managing qualitative data of all sorts (focus groups, field notes, interviews, case studies, table analyses, etc.). The training will include a discussion on the qualitative research process as well as the specific capabilities of the software. To register, go to www.queri.org and select the “research and training” tab and then to “Click here to download a pdf of the most recent schedule of training.”

SFTP to Replace FTP

As part of our continuing effort to replace all programs that transmit usernames and passwords in clear text, we will be replacing FTP with Secure FTP at the end of August. However, both our Linux FTP server (ftp.ssc.wisc.edu) and our Windows FTP server (ntftp.ssc.wisc.edu) are capable of using SFTP now, and we suggest you make the transition as soon as possible.

If you use FTP on one of our Linux servers, it's as simple as replacing the ftp command with sftp (e.g. sftp ftp.ssc.wisc.edu). If you use FTP from a Windows computer, we suggest you use SecureFX, which is site licensed for use by UW faculty, staff and students. Our new publication Transferring Files Using SecureFX gives instructions on installing and using it.

Tip: Transferring Files To and From the SSCC Network

There are several good ways to transfer files to and from the SSCC network, in addition to SFTP. If you already use the Citrix ICA Client to connect to the SSCC's Windows Terminal Servers (Wincenters or Winstats) you can use the ICA client to transfer files as well. Inside your terminal server session, open My Computer and you'll see a drive called 'C$ on Client.' This is the local hard drive of the computer you are connecting from. You can transfer files between it and the SSCC network drives just by dragging them.

VPN (Virtual Private Networking) allows your computer to log in to the SSCC network directly. You can then map network drives just as if you were in the Sewell Social Science Building. This is ideal if you want to run programs on your computer using data on the SSCC network. However, it does take more work to set up.

And finally there is SFTP, as described above. If you just need to transfer files, SFTP is very easy to set up and use.

Emailing files to yourself is not a recommended method. Once any of the above methods are set up on your computer, they're actually less work than attaching a file to an email message. They're also much easier on the SSCC's servers.

All these methods work very well (except email), so feel free to use whichever seems easiest to you or whichever you're used to.